Take That in Munich

I'm married to a fantastic man who loves surprises, and so are a lot of my dear girlfriends.  Hubby has caught me open mouthed with surprise at my amazing 40th birthday dinner at The Manse in North Adelaide, and again at Zurich Airport when our lovely friends Sars and JD flew in from Australia to stay and I had absolutely no idea (cue lots of tears, hugs and laughter).  But this time we decided to work jointly with Craig to surprise his gorgeous wife Mel in Munich last Friday afternoon.

Mel & Craig are British, but currently live in Australia, and are dear friends of ours.  Over the last 4 months Craig has been spinning believable stories to Mel about visiting the UK via Munich, where he apparently had to go for business.  She fell for it all.  They arrived at their hotel after the awfully long flight from Australia on Friday morning, and we drove up from Rado, arriving mid afternoon.  They were in the bar when we arrived, and I snuck up behind Mel and gave her a big hug.  She was totally in shock and it was seriously fabulous.

Surprise!

We spent the afternoon with them, all spinning lines about going to dinner that night in a beer cellar in the big park near the Olympia Stadium.  Again, she fell for it all - even when we were walking past squads of women wearing Take That t-shirts!  Eventually we arrived at the stadium and Paul consulted his map and said that we had to go in, and we handed over the Take That tickets.  Mel just kept reading her ticket (which looked like a boarding pass, printed on A4 paper) and trying to figure it out and then she realised that we were all going to the concert and she was thrilled.

Hey!  We're At Take That!

Anyway, the concert was top class.  It was the last date in the world wide Progress concert tour and the boys pulled out all the stops.  The support was Pet Shop Boys and they put on a great show - I swear they haven't aged even though they've been around for decades.

Pet Shop Boys

Then it was time for Take That, and they certainly didn't disappoint.  The stage was huge, with large mechanised robots on it and a long runway out into the crowd.  Firstly it was the four guys performing without Robbie and they were on for about 45 minutes.  Then Robbie came on alone and was on for about 45 minutes, then they all came on together for about 45 minutes.

The stage show was amazing, with lots of dancers, costumes and a giant caterpillar wearing a saddle that they rode on.  They spent a lot of time interacting with the crowd on the long catwalk, and turning the cameras on their crew and support to say thanks for all their help at the very last show.

Robbie was still Robbie, nothing changes there.  He's a cheeky monkey and didn't let us down, he was great and everyone was smiling and singing along.

Robbie & The Robot

The only downside was that they still allow smoking at concerts in Germany and LOTS of Germans smoke.  There doesn't seem to be any regulation on smoking here.  You can buy cigarettes from vending machines on the street, so there's no age limit either.  By the time we left the concert we all smelt like ash-trays, and the boys, being taller, were having the smoke blown in their faces when people thoughtfully blew smoke up high.

We got back to the hotel around midnight after a concert that started about 7.30pm - we certainly got our moneys worth!

We bought Mel & Craig back to Rado on Saturday and they fly out to the UK today - it's been seriously fabulous to have them here.

Yay For Surprises!